The use of social media has been recognized as a useful tool to connect with customers. Here are some key ways to utilize this channel to improve your service.
More businesses than ever are recognizing the benefits of using social media. However, they are predominantly using social media in a marketing capacity. Companies use their social media pages to promote their brand, raise awareness of their products or services, and to attract potential new customers.
Although these are all fantastic ways of using social media in a business capacity, there are many other ways you can use these sites for your business.
One way is to utilize social media to improve your customer service and here are just ten of the ways opting to use social media can improve your customer service.
1. Quicker Response
One aspect of customer service that infuriates customers the most is that it wastes their time. Either they are in a long telephone queue waiting for the chance to speak to a member of the customer services team or they have to wait for hours, or even days, for a representative of a company to get back to them. Using social media is a way that customers can get in touch with you instantly and this removes the stress of trying to get in touch with your company via other methods. If you use social media, your response is also much quicker as you can acknowledge their query instantly and get back to them as soon as you have found a solution to the problem.
2. A Personal Experience
There are many ways that a customer can get in touch with a company, such as contact forms or via email. However, customers often find these methods very impersonal. Using social media as a customer service tool adds a personal element to the way you communicate with your customers.
3. Direct Engagement
Often, people find it difficult to use aspects of a businesses customer services as they are only indirect services with no direct contact with a member of the customer services personnel. Social media is a great solution to this as it offers a form of direct communication between your company and the customer. Improving customer engagement such as this is also a fantastic way of retaining customers and making sure they buy your products or use your services again.
4. Positive Word of Mouth
Word of mouth remains one of the best marketing tools that a business has because if people talk about your business positively to other people, it helps to build the reputation of your brand and attracts new customers. Your customer service can contribute to the positive things that people say about your brand. If you are using social media to deliver fast and efficient customer service to your customers, then it is something about which they will talk positively to others.
5. Transforming Negatives into Positives
Many companies fear negative feedback, especially when it is posted publicly on social media. However, you should view this as a positive as it is a chance to show the customer that you know how to handle criticism and resolve their issues. It also shows potential customers that you are a brand that takes customer satisfaction seriously and that you are willing to take measures to rectify a customer’s negative experience of your business.
6. Social Listening Opportunities
Social media is an opportunity to listen to what your customers think about your brand; both the positives and the negatives. In terms of customer service, this will tell you whether people are satisfied with the service you have delivered. Across your whole business, listening to customers will help you to identify your strengths and your weaknesses. In turn, this will help you to continue doing the things that you do well and to work on improving the areas that you have identified as a weakness.
7. Reducing Costs
Using social media as a customer service tool can significantly reduce the costs of this area of your business. Setting up social media pages that you can use as a way of communicating with your customers costs far less than many other methods of delivering customer service.
8. Transparency
Transparency is something that is important to many customers. They need to know that you are listening to what you say and that you are taking action accordingly. As social media is a public platform, there is a greater level of transparency when you are communicating with your customers in this manner.
9. Easy Follow-Up
It is not just how you handle inquiries or complaints as you receive them that matters; the way that you follow these up is just as important. Social media makes the follow-up process much easier as it is simple to get back in touch with the customer and let them know what you have done in response to the information with which they have provided you.
10. Reputation Management
Social media can help you to manage your online reputation as people are likely to talk about your business regardless of whether you are active on social media or not. There are social media monitoring tools that you can use to track any mentions of your business online. This allows you to respond in a positive way to the comments posted. Showing such a good level of customer service will help you to manage your online reputation positively and limit the damage of any negative posts.
